Stop the stupid risks

As we speak, odds are pretty good that Triple H is rehabbing like a mad man.
He appears to have as much drive as anyone in the business today, and all of
that determination plus a little luck may get him back in the ring by autumn
at the earliest. Meanwhile, I'm happy to announce that Chris Benoit's
surgery yesterday was a complete success, and it will enable him to return
to the ring healthy as ever -- in December or maybe January.

While I'm in
the good news category, thank goodness Kurt Angle came out of the brutal
King of the Ring as uninjured as he did: only a concussion, a bruised
tailbone, and five stitches. There was apparently thought given to giving
Angle a day off this weekend, but clearly it was decided he didn't need it
as he's still on the cards for this weekend's house shows.

Steve Austin was
fortunate enough to escape King of the Ring with as little as a sore hand,
pain in said hand, as well as pain in his lower back and tailbone.

Chris
Jericho suffered a concussion from a chairshot, but it was really just a
little one. That doesn't really matter. He's said himself that he's had
bigger concussions before, and this one wasn't so bad. In the world of pro
football, concussions are cumulative and more dangerous with each successive
one, but maybe not in pro wrestling. Mick Foley apparently still has some
pain that won't go away, and he hasn't wrestled in over a year.

By the way, if you want to check out any of these and many more gruesome
injuries, check out WWFBumps.com, proudly brought to you by the World
Wrestling Federation.

If phrased differently, this could easily have been an intro to a column
arguing that wrestling really isn't fake at all, but that would be preaching
to the converted as I don't see why non-wrestling fans would come here and
read this anyway. Besides, that's just not the point.

I enjoy watching wrestling. I love the sport. Don't let the negative tone of
this article convince you otherwise. If I didn't enjoy wrestling or care
about its athletes, I wouldn't care enough to write this. But I do, and just
because I have negative things to say doesn't mean I'm any less of a fan.

That said, I didn't enjoy King of the Ring very much. Don't get me wrong,
everyone put forth a great effort and many of the matches were strong. But I
don't get any kind of thrill from watching two of my favourite performers go
out there are and get dangerously hurt. The two best matches on the card in
my opinion, Kurt Angle's match with Shane McMahon and the main event title
defense, were both marred by injury. The former match was just gruesome,
with more blood than necessary, real glass instead of breakaway, all of the
above injuries to Kurt Angle, and some impressive but dangerous moves by
Shane McMahon like the shooting star press (which Kidman is afraid to use).
The title match included an overeager Booker T slamming Steve Austin over a
table too harshly, Chris Jericho suffering a "mild" concussion, and Chris
Benoit walking into the match already injured from TLC a few weeks back.

That brings me to TLC, the tables, ladders, and chairs match. Some matches
are just built to injure. Hell in a Cell is often one of them. TLC is
another. I get a thrill out of a TLC match as much as the next guy, but I
always feel a little guilty about watching guys put themselves on the line
like that. I always tell myself that it's Wrestlemania or Summerslam and
that it's only once or twice a year and it's okay. Airing TLC on Smackdown!
smacked of desperation, both to get Jericho and Benoit over and maybe to
elevate sagging Smackdown! ratings. It also marks a trend. These matches
often steal the show and get fans talking, so it stands to reason that the
WWF might try to use them more often. That's not a good trend.

I don't care if other federations put on broken glass matches, barbed wire
matches, or exploding death matches. I don't want to see it. It might be
exciting on paper, but I don't want to watch talented performers whom I
enjoy watching killing themselves for the sake of a quick pop. Last year, I
attended one of these generic ultimate fighting contests, where locals
basically enter a single elimination tournament, and I left after two
matches. Too much bone cracking, too much blood, too many guys finishing the
match unable to walk out the door. This kind of stuff is barbaric, and if it
were what the WWF stood for, then organizations like the PTC would be dead
right in their arguments.

I think of the WWF as fun entertainment. I take my girlfriend to some of the
shows, and she likes it. I extol its virtues to friends and family. But they
don't want to watch something akin to ancient Roman gladiatorial games, and
neither do I.

Last year, when the Hardy brothers were in full crazy stunt mode, I wrote
that I didn't want to see them get hurt. [Sep. 1, 2000: Save The Hardy Boyz]
I was concerned for their safety.
What I didn't realize is that in a short time, they and others in the WWF
have raised the bar for risk-taking. Now every wrestler does it, at least a
little bit more than before.

It's not like everything else the WWF is perfect, and the only way they can
improve is to take stupid risks. They should take all the time they spend
planning these stunts and then staying in hospitals, and put their energies
toward creating more in-depth storylines and stronger mat wrestling and
brawls.

North America does not produce lucha wrestlers. We produce brawlers who
wrestle in the lucha style and then get hurt.

Ironically, these injuries aside, this was one of the best weeks for
wrestling television following a strong King of the Ring pay-per-view. I
would love to have talked about how the WCW Invasion is turning around, ever
so much. I can't do that, though, as long as I keep reading announcements of
more and more folks out for one, two, three, and six months. It has to stop.
I don't want to watch Hoganesque matches with six moves and no selling, but
there has got to be a happy medium. By medium, I mean not insane, and by
happy, I mean relatively injury-free.

An argument could be made that injuries are a part of this sport, and Triple
H's torn tendon would make strong evidence. But if this is that kind of
sport, then that's all the more reason to try to prevent injuries and not
take additional risks. With so many stars out, surely this also makes
business sense to the WWF, who will soon need those WCW wrestlers just to
replace their own ailing superstars. Oh wait, with Booker T defending his
WCW title against Buff Bagwell as a house show this weekend, with Y2J
against William Regal topping that card, I think that's already happened.

Mailbag!

Mark, from Ssaber@erols.com, writes:
"You gotta remember that wrestling storylines are similar to soap opera
storylines. Both have to tease big events before they can happen. For soaps,
when someone comes back to life (or some other improbable event), they often
tease it for a few weeks (or at least tease why the person is still alive).
Admittedly I'm talking with the advantage of hindsight having seen the
'real' beginning of the WCW Invasion on Raw last night. The WWF still has
time to put together a great WCW - WWF storyline before the two promotions
begin working autonomously (at least until the next annual or semi-annual
cross-promotion pay-per-view). Give them time, everything will work out and
likely very well."

Teasing a storyline does not entail that you can just sort of throw it out
there, without much thought. If anything the teasers have to be even more
intricately planned, because they have even less time to work with
generally. Movie trailers are not randomly-chosen scenes, and Ross and
Rachel's long-teased romance on 'Friends' never consisted of random and
unexplained dates or embraces. There is logic to both progressions. There is
little logic to Shane's WCW Invasion, or at least there wasn't before
Smackdown!. There are signs that this angle is improving, and as you said,
it will likely 'work out'. Last time I checked, though, 'working out' is not
the adjective one uses to describe the greatest of all-time, which this
angle has or had the potential to be in North America.

Bond Benton, from bhb007@yahoo.com, writes:
"Enjoyed the column. There's some precedent on WWF mis-use of WCW talent.
When Flair jumped ship to the WWF in the early '90's, there was the perfect
opportunity to build a feud with Hogan that could have been the most-hyped,
most-watched story in the history of wrestling. For a host of reasons, it
never materialized. I think something similar is happening now with the
'invasion' angle. John Madden (American football commentator) once spoke of
something called 'paralysis of analysis.' When a person or team thinks so
much about what could or should happen that nothing does. Could it be that
in thinking so much about HOW to do this angle, they have forgotten WHY to
do this angle?"

Well, Mr. Bond, I certainly don't know the details behind the decision not
to have Flair feud with Hogan, but I could easily envision a scenario in
which management decides that the egos involved are too big and it would
never work, or Hogan and Flair both balk at jobbing, or something. Egos in
this new regime seem to mostly be in check, so I'm not sure if that argument
applies.

Your 'paralysis of analysis', though, makes more sense. Still, this angle
hasn't been poorly done in the way that Undertaker's Ministry of Darkness
was poorly done (it was silly and stupid), but more as if it seems like the
WWF had barely given the angle two seconds of thought until recently, as if
they didn't care, the way they don't care about cruiserweights. I'll give it
two more weeks before I comment again, though. Maybe one week.

That's all for now, have a safe and happy Canada Day weekend. Thanks for
reading and writing in.